


This Is My City

by No_Good_Reason



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Gen, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-14 05:03:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1253872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/No_Good_Reason/pseuds/No_Good_Reason
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Superhero AU. Also some detective, noir-y themes involved because I'm stupid.  </p><p>It's been two years since the heroes Egoraptor and Sexbang put the mad genius Ross O'Donovan behind bars. Now, he's escaped, and he's out for blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wake-Up Call

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first thing I've ever written for this site. Don't be too caustic. I plan to update this semi-regularly with chapters of roughly uniform length.  
> Also, how in the world do I mark this as in progress.  
> EDIT: Fixed the chapter format. I'm still really new to how this works.  
> EDIT EDIT: I fixed the things I broke when I fixed the chapter format.

It was a hot night, and dry. He didn’t mind, though. It reminded him of his home, across the sea. He sat down on the bus stop and looked around himself. There was some trash on the ground, a fossilized paper cup cemented with dried coffee, a shattered beer bottle, and several dozen chewed, blacked pieces of gum. He nudged the paper cup with his foot, but it didn’t budge. He frowned and decided he wanted to look at something else.  
He cast his gaze over to the poster on the wall. It showed a black-and-white photo of a man he knew well, although they had never met. It was the man who had caused him to stifle all traces of his accent, to force him to hide anything that might give away his Australian ancestry. The top of the poster read: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? . Underneath the photo was the man’s alias and his real name, and the number for the California State Mental Institution.  
The Australian shivered and fished in his pocket for his cell phone. Having found it, he started to play some silly game his niece had told him about. However, he soon got the feeling that he was being watched, and he turned around to find a tall, gangly man in a trench coat standing behind him. The man smiled awkwardly and sat down on the bench. He sniffed, once, and said to nobody in particular, “So what’s your name?” The Australian pretended he hadn’t heard, until the man looked at him pointedly and asked again, more forcefully, “I asked you a question. What’s your name?” The Australian swallowed, and he could hear the click in his throat. “Bruce,” he said, taking care to make sure that his Australian accent was suppressed. The man nodded to himself, still without looking at the Australian. “Bruce. It’s a nice name.”  
Bruce – for that was his name – nodded and looked back to the screen of his cell phone. But he had lost interest in the game, and he could only warily glance at the strange man, who was now staring at the poster on the wall. His eyes flicked from Bruce, to the poster, and back to Bruce. His mouth opened slightly, as if in sudden realization. His eyes met Bruce’s. “You’re one of those Roo bastards, aren’t you?” His face contorted into a snarl as he began to feel for something inside of his jacket.  
Bruce decided that he really didn’t want to ride the bus tonight anyhow. He stood up on shaky feet, and walked away in what he hoped was a brisk fashion. He stopped when he heard the man behind him get up. And it was then that he remembered where he had seen the man before. He tried to run, but his feet were held to the ground by something leaden, and now the man had grabbed him by the neck, he was being dragged back to the bus stop by the tall man, the tall man was pushing the barrel of a gun in his face and muttering about Australia, and Bruce was fumbling around underneath the bench for the broken bottle, and his fingers grasped the broken glass edge and he flung it into the man’s face and tried to escape his grasp, and when the bullet went through his neck he never even felt it.  
When the bus finally arrived, the driver was greeted with a grisly sight: the desecrated body lying on the floor of the stop, a broken bottle lying next to him in several dozen pieces, and blood pooling and clotting all over the floor, spattering the walls, and obscuring the poster on the wall advertising someone named Ross O’Donovan, who had escaped from some hospital.

\----------

“There was another murder last night,” Arin said as he took another bite of toast.  
“Oh, yeah?” Danny asked as he sleepily pushed some buttons on the coffee maker, squinting in the bright light of the kitchen. He pushed a strand of hair from his face.  
Sunlight streamed through the picture window to illuminate the dining room table. The newspaper was fanned out in front of his plate, and one section was folded open in front of Arin. There was a small blurb in the Police Blotter section:

 

Fifth Murder in “Mistaken Identity” Killings  
Late last night, a thirty-year-old Glendale man was shot to death while awaiting a city bus. Police say that Bruce Mundy was shot once in the neck but also sustained several cuts to the face and body. Police operatives are currently working to determine the killer. This is the fifth in a string of homicides that Sheriff Rustic is calling “cases of mistaken identity.” Rustic believes that the murders are driven by ethnic-related hatred towards Australians. The exact cause of the prejudice is unknown.

 

He read this to Danny, who inhaled slowly. He was quiet for a long time. Finally he said. “We really, really need to figure out what’s going on here.”  
“Wow,” Arin said. “I genuinely had not thought of that. Great idea.” He snorted and shoved the last of his toast into his mouth. He coughed a little as some crumbs fell down his windpipe.  
“Shut up. I’m tired.” Danny poured some coffee into a mug that read _World’s Greatest Whatever-It-Is-You-Do-These-Days_. It had been a gift from his father. He sat down and pawed at the newspaper as Arin choked on toast. Examining the brief and finding no new information, he set the newspaper down and sighed. Finally, Arin swallowed the wad of partially chewed bread and sat at the table, gasping. He looked at Danny, who stared back with a small smile gracing his face. “Remind me,” he panted, “to never, ever, do that again.”  
Danny merely laughed and reached for the Arts and Music section of the paper. He scratched his stubble and sipped at his coffee as he read. Arin got up and began to put more bread in the toaster. Finally he looked up and said to Arin, “Do you think that this is him again?”  
Arin paused, one slice of bread in the toaster oven, the other still in his hand. “Honestly, I’m not sure. The way I see it, though, who else could fuck up a revenge plot so badly that you end up killing your own people?”  
“That’s exactly what I was thinking.”  
“So I guess it’s decided, then,” Arin said, looking wistfully at the bread in his hand. “It’s Ross?”  
Danny took another sip of coffee. “Like you said. Who else?”  
“Yeah.” Arin shoved the other slice of bread in the toaster and pushed the lever down. He walked into the living room and shouted up the stairs. “Hey, Barry!”  
For a while, there was silence, as Arin listened for a response, as Danny drank his coffee. From upstairs came a sleepy, muffled “What?” Danny could barely hear it, but to Arin, it was like Barry was whispering in his ear.  
“There’s toast in the toaster for you. Danny and I are going out for a while. See you this evening, I guess.” He walked back into the kitchen and clapped Danny on the back. “Get dressed and let’s go.”  
Half an hour later, they were walking down Glendale’s main street. Police cruisers buzzed around like large flies as they approached the scene of last night’s murder. They were dressed in matching suits and both wearing sufficiently snappy hats. Arin had outlined the plan on the walk over from his house. (“Okay,” he had said. “We walk over, and we pretend we’re detectives. Sound good?” Arin was not great at plans.)  
However, to complete the disguise, they’d need some identification. Arin pulled a phone out of his pocket and dialed Barry’s number.

 

Barry was tired. He had had a long night, and to make matters worse, he was beginning to develop a migraine. Perhaps he shouldn’t have gone drinking with Arin and Danny last night – he should have figured they could out-drink him. But he had wanted to look cool, so he had matched Danny drink for drink, and before he knew it he had drank 6 shots of vodka and the room was beginning to tumble. Danny, of course, was sober as the day he was born.  
And now here he was, huddled underneath a makeshift blanket tent and hoping that the sun would go away this morning. Then the phone went off. He groaned as the ringtone blared through the room. For a moment he debated ignoring the phone entirely, then gave it up as a bad idea. If it was something important and he dropped the ball, the guys would never let him hear the end of it. He extricated himself from his tent, spitting every curse word he knew and several he had made up, before grabbing the phone and pulling the curtains over the window. He flipped open the phone and muttered something that sounded like “Hello.”  
Arin’s voice floated through the speaker, made tinny by the outdated phone. “Hey, Barry. I need you to do something.”  
Of course.  
He stifled the urge to tell Arin to fuck off. Instead, what he said was: “Uh, sure. What is it?” He rubbed his pounding forehead. He wondered if a hot shower would make him feel better.  
“Hey, you don’t sound too hot. Are you okay?”  
Barry closed his eyes. “Yeah. Just hungover. What do you need?”  
The phone squawked in his hand, and he pulled it away from his head. “Sorry. Uh, can you give us two police badges and ID cards? With aliases, I dunno, whatever you think sounds good. One for me, one for Danny. ‘Kay?”  
Barry nodded.  
“Barry?”  
“Yes,” Barry said into the phone. “Will do. Uh, can you please get some Excedrin while you’re out?” He closed the phone without even bothering to give him an answer. He began to concentrate on the shape of a golden shield, and tried to make the thought of a shower leave his mind.

\----------

“Why did you let him drink so much last night?”  
Danny looked at Arin. They were both sitting on a park bench about two hundred feet from the crime scene. In front of them was a small pond. Behind them, police officers and detectives swarmed around the body of Bruce Mundy. Arin watched as a CSI picked up a bullet fragment from the asphalt next to the body. He could see the mustard stain on the CSI’s coat. Probably from the hot dog the man had eaten for lunch. The man still had crumbs on his face. Arin blinked, and his vision was normal again. He looked back at Danny.  
Danny looked hurt. “It’s not my fault. I thought he could handle it.” He pouted. “It’s your fault.”  
“Whatever,” Arin said. “He sounds really hungover, and I don’t want his head to explode or something.” He noticed a glint of light in the pond. “Hey, I think that’s it.” He walked over to the pond and pulled a grocery bag out. Inside the bag were two clip-on badges and two ID cards. Arin examined the cards. “He didn’t do so great a job with the aliases this time.”  
Danny looked over Arin’s shoulder. “Greg Legendo and Dan Ottoden. Is he still drunk?”  
“Thanks to you.” Arin looked at the badges. “Why is there a bar of soap on here?”  
Danny grabbed a badge, affixed it to his suit, and walked towards the crime scene. “No idea. Come on.”

\----------

 

Ross was lying in a trash pile ten miles from the place where Bruce Mundy was killed. Occasionally he would reach out a finger to one of the rats that swarmed the alley. They bit at his finger, and he pulled it away. He would play this game for hours at a time, until night fell. Then he would stand up, check the bullets in his gun (only five now, he was running out, he needed to find some soon) and go hunting. He was running out of game – but he’d find them. He’d show them. He’d show those pricks who was in charge.  
He got up – although it was not hunting time – and began to stumble in the direction he thought Arin’s house was in. He had gotten an idea. And as he walked – and as people gave him odd looks and a wide berth – he began to cackle at how fiendishly clever the whole idea was.


	2. Getting Answers

Dan was walking nonchalantly towards the crime scene. He had slipped on a pair of aviator sunglasses and was picking some lint off of the shoulder of his suit. As he walked, he took note of the police officers around the bus stop. One seemed to have a fancier hat and was writing something on the clipboard. He was ten feet away and about to say something when Arin pushed past him. Danny shot him a look of irritation, but was placated when he felt Arin place Danny’s fake ID in his hand. He’d forgotten about that thing.   
“Morning. You must be Mr. Rustic,” Arin addressed the portly man, who looked up when he heard his name and blinked at Arin. Dan looked down at his ID.  
“Yeah. Sheriff Rustic to you,” said the man. “You the guys that Central sent down?” Dan’s eyes flicked towards Arin’s for a second, and he spoke up.   
“Yep. We’re here to take a look.” He stretched his empty hand towards the officer. “Call me Greg. This guy’s Dan,” and he jerked his thumb towards Arin, who nodded bemusedly. The officer took his hand and pumped it up and down strongly. Dan tried not to wince.   
Arin looked at the body of Mundy. There was a bullet hole in his neck, and a large pool of blood on the concrete that spread out into the street and down a nearby sewer drain. There was a large gash on the man’s cheek, and one of his eyelids was severed. Arin made a disgusted face and looked up. There was blood splattered on the wall of the bus stop, and a poster for some nutcase who had escaped his cage. His eyes wandered over the picture, and stopped. He walked over to the poster, and brushed some half-clotted blood from it.   
“Hey, you can’t really do that…” said one of the CSIs. Arin ignored him. “Hey Dan -- or, Greg. Come here.”   
Dan walked away from the police chief and looked over Arin’s shoulder. “Is that –“  
“It sure is. And check this out.” He pointed at the phone number for the California State Mental Institution. “Something tells me that calling these guys up would be a good idea.” He and Dan stepped away from the poster and carefully extricated themselves from the crime scene.  
“I was talking to Deputy Dawg there,” said Danny, indicating the sheriff as they walked away. “He said that all of the killings are at night, but that’s the only thing they have in common. Aside from, you know. The obvious bit.”  
“The ethnicity.” A car pulled up behind them, and two men stepped out. One was wearing a cream-colored suit, the other was wearing a powder-gray one. Arin looked back at them for a second. “Walk faster.”  
“Right.” Their pace hurried, and they turned around the corner. “You want to do lunch? There’s a sandwich place up ahead.”   
“You just ate.”  
“That was, like, an hour ago. Come on.” And Dan opened the door to a nearby deli. Sighing, Arin followed.  
\-------------------- 

Meanwhile, back at the crime scene, the cream-suited man and his gray-suited companion were introducing themselves to the Sheriff.   
“Good morning, sir,” he said, offering his hand to shake. “I don’t know if Central told you we were coming. We’re here to inspect the body.”  
Sheriff Rustic looked up at the man, then looked at his outstretched hand, then looked back at his face. He looked extremely confused.  
\--------------------  
As Dan and Arin ate lunch, Barry was vomiting into the toilet. His hangover was not letting up, and he was beginning to hallucinate. He had heard glass breaking downstairs, and had thought he had heard someone speaking in a low, soft voice. He had been worried for a while – Arin said they weren’t getting back until evening – but then the nausea kicked in.   
Finally the vomiting gave way to dry heaves, and he was able to wipe the stomach acid from his lips and stumble back to his room. He collapsed on his bed and buried his head into a pillow. His head felt like it was radiating bright orange flares of heat and pain.   
He couldn’t hear the footsteps behind him.  
\--------------------  
Two large sandwiches and a half-hour taxi ride later, Dan and Arin found themselves outside of the California State Mental Institution. It was a large, imposing building, made of gray steel and small windows. A tall, wrought-iron fence wrapped around the grounds, which were being patrolled by platoons of guards. It gave Dan the creeps just looking at it. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live in that place.  
He looked over to Arin. “How do you wanna do this?” he asked, gesturing to the institution. “You want to keep doing the Inspector Clousseau bullshit or do you wanna have some fun?”   
Arin grinned. “Let’s do it the fun way.” He looked up at the fence and noted the WARNING: HIGH VOLTAGE sign. He took a deep breath, and vaulted over the ten-foot barrier.   
He landed on the other side with a thump and a gasp. He stood up, dusted himself off, and looked back to Dan. He smiled again. “Try to keep up.” He began to creep across the grounds towards the building.  
Dan laughed, once. “Showoff.” He closed his eyes and saw the Other.  
\--------------------  
At least, that’s what he had called it. He was certain that there was some sort of official name for what he could see and move around in. But to him, calling it the Other just fit. It was a strange sort of spirit dimension that he and a select few people could access.   
Everything was a dark shade of gray in the Other. Nothing had a clear or defined shape except for his body and the body of another Other-walker. Anything else was just a wisp of cloud over a stormy sea. Danny’s body seemed to be immaterial in the Other: he could walk through anything like it was a gently wafting curtain. Nothing could see him or touch him while he was in the Other: to their eyes he looked like he had dissolved into shadow. If an Other-walker saw him while he was in the Other, though, they would see him as a dark mass of inky black matter with glowing yellow eyes and a bright, beating heart.  
One thing he’d noticed: The Other was very cold. Coming back to his world was like walking into a sauna after sitting in a meat locker.  
\--------------------  
Arin leapt into a tree, arms scrabbling for branches and legs gripping the side of the trunk as he spied a guard below him. He could hear everything: the soft chirp of a baby bird above, the gentle whistle of wind through the tree, the guard muttering to himself: he always got duty in the woods, always him, they knew how it gave him the creeps, they just knew it. Arin gently made his way across a narrow tree branch, his legs dangling six inches above the guard’s head. If the man looked up at any moment, Arin would be caught before he even got anywhere.  
Luckily, the guard was blissfully unaware that there was anyone anywhere near him, and Arin was able to silently drop from the tree and land behind the man. He took a step towards the man. Then another, and another, until finally he could have reached out and tapped the guard on the shoulder. Which he did. When the man turned around, Arin hit him in the temple, once, and the man dropped like a bag of rocks.  
Whistling a merry tune to himself, Arin searched the man’s pockets until he found a walkie-talkie. He held the radio gingerly, licked his lips, and pushed the “talk” button three times, sending a short burst of static over the airwaves. It wasn’t long before someone responded.  
“Yeah, Simmons, whattaya want?” asked a brusque-sounding woman, her vaguely Bostonian accent distorted by static. “If you’re crying about how the woods are making ya piss yourself, I don’t wanna hear it.”  
Arin took a deep breath and looked down at the unconscious guard, trying to imagine what his voice would sound like. From the mumbling he had heard, he could make a pretty good guess.  
“Simmons? You okay out there?”  
“Yeah. Yes, yeah. I’m fine,” Arin said hurriedly, unconsciously mimicking the man’s voice perfectly. : I had a – I forgot which cell the O’Donovan kid was in.”  
“Well, why do ya wanna know that?” A hard edge had formed in her voice. Was his imitation slipping?  
“I dunno, it’s one of those things. Where you can’t think about anything else until you remember. Plus,” he added, “If you’re going to be keeping me out here in the woods, you might as well be nice to me.” Satisfied that a note of authenticity had been added, he released the “talk” button.  
He heard a sigh over the radio. The distortion made it sound like an elephant breathing. “Okay. Fine. You win. O’Donovan was in cell number…” A pause. “Two thirty-nine eight C. Happy?”  
“Very.” Arin dropped the radio and walked towards the hospital.  
\--------------------  
Danny didn’t have any need for trickery. One of the perks of being an Otherwalker was that he had an innate sense of direction. He didn’t need to know where things were. He just knew. All he had to do was imagine the place in his mind, and he would feel an uncanny sense of being pulled toward it, like iron fillings to a magnet. It didn’t matter whether he was finding the nearest deli or the Oracle of Delhi. No matter where the place was, he simply had to contemplate the concept of the place and he knew instantly where it was.  
Ross’s cell, he thought to himself. He imagined that it had a small, gray bed in one corner, a toilet and a sink in another, and maybe a small chair across from the bed. He realized – as if he was remembering where he put his glasses – that the cell was on the third floor of the hospital. It was near a window, which was barred to prevent anyone from escaping. The cell was directly above the mess hall. All these things he knew in an instant. He was moderately sure he did not know these things beforehand.  
He snapped his fingers to himself and stalked along the hallway. If anyone was alert enough to realize something was amiss – and no-one was, he knew that – they wouldn’t see anything but a few waves of dust swirling around his feet. He was nothing more than a shadow, nothing more than the half-realized terror lurking beneath a bed or within an attic. He was Other.  
He slowly climbed two sets of stairs, keeping to the side of the staircase to avoid bumping into anyone. He was still tangible in the Other. He had reached the final set of stairs when something gave him pause.  
He didn’t know what it was. An odd taste in the air, perhaps, or something about the way the fluorescent lights flickered softly. Whatever it was, it made him wary. He cast his gaze around him, feeling the hairs on his arms stand up. Then he saw it  
The beating heart of an Otherwalker. Behind a locked iron door and walls of steel, but there. He had never met Another. He had understood from a very young age that power like his was … rare. Not unique, but rare. To meet someone who shared his power, who shared his life, was interesting indeed.  
He cautiously walked over to the cell door that masked the purple heart of Another. It pulsed slowly. The Otherwalker was asleep. His fingers brushed the dark gray door, Even for the Other, it was cold. He turned his gaze to the clipboard next to the door. It held all the information pertaining to the man inside. Cell number, special containment procedures (Danny noted that the subject needed to be restrained at all times and contained in lead. Lead, he thought. That makes a certain degree of sense.), next of kin, and other facts. Danny noted the subject’s name.  
JAFARI, JONATHAN.  
Do I know that name?, Danny asked himself. He racked his brain. Was it a villain we fought? Someone we saved from said villain? Did Jon Jafari own one of the many delis he frequented. Danny asked whether he’d ever eaten at a Jafari’s Deli. He couldn’t think of anything.  
He shrugged it off. Maybe I don’t know that name.  
He turned to look for Ross’s cell. He didn’t know where it was, but he had a dead lock on its location.  
\--------------------  
Barry was wretched. That seemed to be the perfect word for his condition. Perfectly wretched. He rolled over onto his back and stared at the far-too-80s popcorn ceiling. He blinked. He blinked again. Something didn’t feel right.  
Well, maybe it was the hangover that he wasn’t getting over. He debated whether he should try to edit out the headache. Nah, he thought with a certain sort of bitter resignation. Too risky. He’d have to settle for simple Excedrin.  
He fell out of bed, and slowly got to his feet. He surveyed the floor of the room for some time. It was fairly neat, but there was some general disorder. He considered whether he should clean up. A man needed to live in a clean environment. A man’s home is his castle. His father had told him that, and although his father was a deadbeat asshole who never called home and didn’t pay his alimony, he had taught Barry a lot of things. Barry bent over to try and pick up the dirty pair of underwear.  
“Hello, Barry.”  
Barry swung around, nearly falling over from the effort. When he saw who was standing in the door to his room, he did fall over. Because standing in the door, holding a gun, was –  
Ross.


End file.
